What This License Is
The North Carolina Accident and Health or Sickness line lets you sell health, disability and related coverage in the state. It is issued by NCDOI and sits on the same producer license as any other line you hold.
It is genuinely standalone. North Carolina offers no combined Life & Accident and Health exam — a producer who wants both sits two exams at $45 each. That matters because national prep material almost universally assumes a combined sitting exists.
One line boundary worth knowing: Medicare Supplement / Long-Term Care is its own separate line of authority in North Carolina, with its own 50-question exam, rather than something folded into A&H. If Medicare supplement is the business you actually intend to write, check which line your carrier requires before you book anything.
Exam Options & Format
The Accident & Health or Sickness Agent exam is 55 scored questions plus 5 unscored pretest items, 1 hour 15 minutes, $45 through Pearson VUE.
The five major producer exams here are two-part — a general-knowledge section and a North Carolina section — and the handbook is clear about what that means: "the two parts are scored together, not individually." You get one overall score. There is no separate pass mark per part, no partial credit, and no carrying a passed part into a retake.
The passing standard is a scaled score of 70 on a 0-100 scale — which is not the same thing as 70% correct. The handbook is explicit: the reported score "is neither the number of questions you answered correctly nor the percentage of questions you answered correctly." Raw answers are converted onto a common scale so a marginally harder form is not a harder pass.
Pre-licensing education is no longer required. Session Law 2025-45 amended G.S. 58-33-30(d)(1) effective October 1, 2025 so that "the Commissioner shall not require an individual who applies for an insurance producer license in this State to complete any specific amount of instruction or any specific course of instruction." The old 20 hours per line is gone. Courses still exist and are still worth taking — but they are optional, and any site telling you to buy 20 hours before you may sit the exam is describing the law as it stood before last October. NCDOI's own legacy prelicensing page is among them.
And note the order, because North Carolina inverts it. You file the NIPR application before you test. Pearson then emails an authorization carrying a six-month eligibility window, and the exam must be passed and the license issued inside that window or you reapply and pay again. There is no "your score is good for twelve months" rule here — the application is what expires.
The narrower alternative is the Medicare Supplement / Long-Term Care Agent exam — 50 scored questions plus 10 pretest, and notably a longer 1 hour 45 minutes despite being a shorter paper. It is a one-part exam rather than two-part, and it is a different line of authority, not a subset of A&H.
Most Tested Topics on the North Carolina Accident & Health Exam
North Carolina's health section leans on G.S. 58-51-15's required policy provisions and on a set of state-specific numbers that a national course will get wrong. Each is cited:
| Concept | The North Carolina rule |
|---|---|
| Proof of loss | 180 days — after the termination of the period for periodic payments, or after the date of loss otherwise (G.S. 58-51-15). The NAIC uniform provision and essentially all national material use 90 days; North Carolina doubles it |
| Notice of claim | Within 20 days after the occurrence or commencement of loss, or as soon as reasonably possible |
| Grace period, tiered by premium mode | 7 days weekly-premium, 10 days monthly-premium, 31 days all others — unlike the flat 31-day life grace period |
| Time limit on certain defenses | 2 years from issue or reinstatement — after that only fraudulent misstatements may void the policy or deny a claim |
| Reinstatement, accident vs. sickness | Coverage for accidents begins on the reinstatement date; for sickness, only if it begins more than 10 days after reinstatement |
| Time of payment of claims | Non-periodic benefits "immediately upon receipt of due written proof"; periodic benefits at least monthly |
| Legal actions | No suit before 60 days after written proof, and none after 3 years from when proof was required |
| Clean-claim payment | 30 calendar days to pay, deny or notify — the same deadline for paper and electronic, with 18% annual interest on a late clean claim (§ 58-3-225) |
| External review | Administered by NCDOI's Smart NC, decided by an Independent Review Organization, and binding on the insurer — 45 days for a standard decision (§ 58-50-80), and not more than three days on an expedited review (§ 58-50-82) |
| Marketplace | Federally-facilitated (HealthCare.gov). North Carolina did not build a state exchange |
| Medicaid expansion | Yes — effective December 1, 2023, to 138% of the federal poverty level. North Carolina was among the last states to expand |
| Small employer | No more than 50 eligible employees on at least 50% of working days in the preceding calendar quarter; an eligible employee works a normal week of 30 or more hours (§ 58-50-110) |
| State continuation | Up to 18 months, requiring 3 consecutive months of prior coverage, elected within not fewer than 60 days, at not more than 102% of the full group rate (Article 53) |
| Medicare supplement free look | 30 days from delivery (§ 58-54-30) |
| Medicare supplement, under 65 | Insurers must offer standardized plans to those Medicare-eligible by reason of disability before 65, without regard to health status, if applied for in the 6-month period beginning with the first month of Part B enrolment (§ 58-54-45) |
The 180-day proof of loss is the highest-value item on this page. It is a genuine North Carolina deviation from the NAIC uniform provision, the number is exactly double the familiar one, and 90 days will be sitting right there as a distractor. Learn it alongside the 20-day notice of claim, because the pair — 20 and 180 — is the shape of the question.
The second thing worth deliberate study is Medicaid expansion. North Carolina expanded on December 1, 2023, years after most states, which means older prep material may still describe it as a non-expansion state. Pair that with the federally-facilitated marketplace — North Carolina has no state exchange — and you have two questions that turn purely on knowing which side of the line the state sits on.
North Carolina Temporary Producer Licenses — Who Gets One and What It Allows
North Carolina issues a temporary producer license under G.S. 58-33-66, and the first thing to understand is what it is not. It is not a way to start selling while you study, not a provisional license for someone waiting on a result, and not available to an ordinary new applicant. It exists so that an existing book of business keeps being serviced when the person servicing it suddenly cannot.
The core grant. The Commissioner may issue a temporary license for a period not to exceed 180 days — longer for good cause — and may waive the examination. Both of those are discretionary. The statute frames the whole power around servicing an existing insurance business rather than around the applicant's convenience.
Who qualifies. Four categories:
1. The surviving spouse or personal representative of a licensed producer who has died, or of one who has become disabled — so the book does not go unserviced while an estate or a recovery works itself out.
2. A member or employee of a licensed business entity where a key individual dies or becomes disabled, so the agency continues to function.
3. The designee of a licensed insurance producer entering active service in the Armed Forces. The statute names this case explicitly.
4. Any other circumstance where the Commissioner deems the public interest best served. The catch-all, exercised case by case.
The conditions attached are the part that matters in practice. The Commissioner may limit the temporary licensee's authority, and may require the licensee to be sponsored by a licensed producer or an insurer. Most significantly, a temporary licensee may represent only those insurers that had appointed the producer at the time of the death or the onset of the disability. That is a servicing license in substance: you may keep the existing carriers' business running, not go out and build a new one.
Why a health producer should care. Health and disability books are unusually sensitive to a gap in servicing. Open enrolment periods do not pause, claims keep arriving, group renewals land on their own schedule, and a Medicare book is particularly time-boxed. If you run an agency, § 58-33-66 is the succession mechanism to understand before you need it — 180 days is the ceiling, and it runs from issuance rather than from the event.
One thing it is not: an exam waiver for you. The other routes to a North Carolina license without sitting the exam are prior licensure for the same lines in another state and nonresident reciprocity, both under G.S. 58-33-32 — the Property & Casualty guide covers them. Professional designations do not waive the exam here. CLU, CPCU, CIC, FLMI and the rest historically waived prelicensing education only, and prelicensing itself was repealed on October 1, 2025, so that exemption now has nothing left to exempt you from.
What It Costs
$45 for the exam, plus the NIPR application — and since October 1, 2025, nothing at all for prelicensing, because the 20-hour course requirement was repealed. That repeal removed what had usually been the largest line item in a North Carolina candidate's budget.
NIPR shows an $82 initial resident application including the $38 criminal record check, plus $50 per line of authority and NIPR's transaction fee. Because NCDOI's resident fee schedule PDF is currently unavailable, treat the NIPR payment screen as the authority. Budget separately for whatever your local law enforcement agency charges to take fingerprints — that fee varies by agency and is not published anywhere.
And there is no renewal fee, because the license does not renew.
Eligibility Requirements
You must be at least 18 years old and, for a resident license, live in North Carolina. There is no education requirement of any kind — the prelicensing coursework that used to gate the exam was repealed on October 1, 2025 — so the exam and the background check are the whole test.
The background side is real, though. G.S. 58-33-48 requires every resident producer applicant to give the Commissioner a complete set of fingerprints for a state and federal criminal record check, and the NIPR application carries the usual uniform disclosure questions on criminal history, administrative actions and unsatisfied judgments. A criminal history is not an automatic bar, but crimes involving fraud, dishonesty or breach of trust weigh heavily. Note that the fingerprint requirement is a resident-only rule — non-resident applicants under G.S. 58-33-32 are exempt from it.
Keeping Your License Active
Important CE details: North Carolina producer licenses do not renew — they are perpetual. What keeps one alive is CE: 24 credit hours per two-year compliance cycle, including 3 hours of ethics, due by the last day of your birth month in odd or even years matching your birth year. CE is administered by Prometric, not by Pearson VUE. NCDOI and Prometric name only ethics and flood as mandatory line-specific CE; a specific North Carolina hour count for long-term care producer training could not be confirmed from a primary source.
North Carolina producer licenses are perpetual — NCDOI's own words: they "do not renew and are valid until surrendered, canceled or revoked." There is no renewal date and no renewal fee. What must be maintained is continuing education.
The requirement is 24 credit hours per two-year compliance cycle including 3 hours of ethics, due by the last day of your birth month, in years matching your birth-year parity — odd birth year, odd years. Holding several lines does not multiply it; 24 is the statutory ceiling under G.S. 58-33-130. CE runs through Prometric, not Pearson VUE.
For health producers the flood requirement does not apply — that one attaches to Property and Personal Lines authority. NCDOI and Prometric name only ethics and flood as mandatory line-specific CE, and we could not confirm a specific North Carolina hour count for long-term care producer training from a primary source, so this guide does not state one. The Property & Casualty guide covers the compliance mechanics in full, including the four-month makeup window.
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